Today in "WTF is the matter with people?"
Books don't harm children - but smashing eggs on their heads for a Tik Tok challenge...
Yesterday I met with a new MFA student I’m working with this semester (waves at N. J) about the YA novel she’s working on. Because of it’s subject matter, we got onto a discussion of growing up in a time with different technology, which as anyone who knows me and my work is something I think and write about a lot.
I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about Tik Tok, and if I should force myself to set up an account because that’s where “the youts” are. Thus far, I’ve resisted for a number of reasons, but a major one is that when I tried watching a series of posts on BookTok to see what it was about, it felt like the choppy, frenetic nature of the app broke my brain, and made me want to go lose myself in a book to fix it.
But Tik Tok sells books, right? So my author brain has been saying, “Sarah! You always said you wouldn’t be an old person who refuses to keep up with technology. Get over yourself and set up an account!”
Still, I hesitated. I’ve admired my author friends who are naturals at it, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. It makes me feel inadequate, like I’ve turned into this:
I’ve also fretted about it, wondering if my lack of Tik Tok presence will make it less likely I’ll sell another book.
But then I woke up to an article in the Washington Post with the hed: Doctors to Parents: Stop smashing eggs on your kids’ heads on Tik Tok.
Yes, mes braves, apparently this is a thing.
WHY? WHY IS IT A THING?
How is teaching your kids that you can’t be trusted when you are their ultimate source of caring and comfort considered funny?
If you’re fortunate enough to not have heard about this, I’m sorry for alerting you to it, but here’s a lady in Barbie pink with a cross around her neck and a baby on her hip doing it to her young son, who is so excited that Mama is going to help him use the stove to make pancakes:
I’m sure there are many more worse ones, but I can only stomach so much of this without wanting to call child protective services.
This poor boy is so excited when he introduces his baby sister and Mama to the audience of their “cooking show.” Then he’s upset about the filter that puts makeup on his eyes - he tries to wipe it off. When his mom smashes the egg on his face he’s visibly and rightfully angry and starts crying.
And then when they go to do another round:
She thinks it’s funny content, he’s talking about her HITTING him.
It speaks to the power imbalance to which this parent seems completely oblivious.
As children, we trust our parents to tell us the truth about the world. I know how shattering it can be to our sense of well-being and trust when we find out that’s not true - and my parents were keeping something from me for a really good reason, which as an adult I totally understand, but at the time I found out, it was devastating.
And my parents didn’t smash eggs on my head to get likes on social media.
Cath Knibbs, who writes and speaks about cybertrauma is quoted in the WAPO article saying:
…she found it “really, really difficult” to watch the clips.
“We’re talking about abuse disguised as having a bit of a laugh,” she said in a telephone interview. “For a child, the most important relationship they have is with their caregiver, whomever that should be. And that involves a trusting relationship — that this person will take care of me.”
She added: “It’s not just the cracking of the egg; it’s the parents’ responses of laughing. By children, that’s experienced as humiliation. It’s experienced as a lack of trust. And many children are going to be confused by that on a visceral level, never mind just about a cognitive level.”
Some of my best moments as a parent were spent baking with my kids in the kitchen, in private, without filters to make me look better, and most of all without abusing them for shits and giggles, for likes and shares, to follow some ridiculous trend.
This woman has the right of it in her parody of these videos:
So for now, I stay resolute in my desire to avoid Tik Tok. I know there are wonderful things on it, like recipes and book recommendations, and products that I might love.
But I’m deeply disturbed that a social media platform can make this kind of child abuse seem “fun”. I have more thoughts about it, but I don’t want to sound like a crank, so I’ll end here, by reiterating how grateful I am to have grown up without social media. I’m not sure I’d have survived to adulthood as a teen in today’s world.
I’m grateful that I learned to spend my spare time reading rather than scrolling. It’s hard enough to resist the pull having grown up the way I did, so I can’t blame kids who have had social media in their lives since the beginning for becoming addicted. These platforms are built to achieve that goal.
To avoid falling down the rabbit hole, I always have more than one book downloaded on my phone and e-reader, so if I catch myself scrolling, I stop and remind myself to use the time reading instead. Because I know my time left on this earth is less than what I’ve already spent, and…
Couldn't have been said any better.
Meanwhile, many politicians and influencers are crying "parental rights" because teachers are supposedly "indoctrinating" their kids. Um, okay.